The core of Chinese traditional culture is that one should first cultivate the selfhood to maturity,having a sound moral integrity,and then one could deal with many other things with great facility.As in the domain of calligraphy,our tradition deemed that even a skillful calligrapher,if he has fraulty moral quality , he could not compose the superb works.So the prerequisite to be an superlative calligraper is that he has a good mind of self-government, rather than the solely pursuit of technique. Our tradition thought highly of the value of a man__™s intrinsic worth all the way.Therefore,thousands and thousands of words of the Confucian ethics about denying self to observe the proprieties,tenets of Mencius teaching us to cherish intentions to be a sage,all induce the following generations to pursue the goal of perfection of our inner life.The kaleidoscopic picture of the world could easily make people lose the orientations and get dazzled by the capricious phenomena. Therefore with the capability of restraining oneself, we gain ourselves the firm stances with which would enable us to handle the reticular situations and tackle the intricate state of affairs much easier.

Harking back to the topic of calligraphy and painting, many of them seem to be effortless rendering of accomplishments.However it is inconceivable for the outsiders to know how painstaking the artists made efforts to polish their spirits and the required expressive skills.The great artist Wen Zheng Ming(1470-1559) of Ming dynasty was a modest and amiable man,and would not ingratiate himself with the bigwigs.The regular script which he wrote is good example for us to learn of how a high level of aesthetic value could be arrived at.As a matter of fact,he had imitated many calligraphy of others with his own conception of the vitality being perfusing to every single stroke.The whole impression of his calligraphy is the briskness in the resplendent and dignified style which let us not fed up with repeated appreciation.According to legend,even he reached his old age of eighty years, he would compose his teeny calligraphy of the ___Thousand Character Classic___ once with the wrist raised every morning.We could see that a real master having the spirit of self-denial,would never slack up even when he had made a name for himself.Therefore the charms of the masterpieces are the manifestation of the rigorous self-discipline towards perfectibility.If we only follow the trails of the attention-getting appearance of the artpieces,without knowing the importance of the endurance to cultivate our inner selves.We are just like sacrifice the substance for the shadow and could not fulfil ourselves as the true artists or the true connoisseurs in the end.

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